If you live in Canada or in the US, the answer is likely obvious (though you might not like it).įrench is a useful language if you live in Canada, or want to travel to France, to Queto a few other countries in Europe (parts of Switzerland and Belgium), or to a few countries in West Africa, where French is spoken as sometimes a first but more often a second language (fluently, but the cultural language that’ll win over locals). This depends a lot on both where you live and where you want to travel to. Which language is more useful, Spanish or French?
See the next few sections for more detail on comparing grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation of both French and Spanish. * English has the subjunctive, but people don’t really know what it is, and few people use it consistently. But in my experience, it’ll take you about half the time to learn the second language, if you know either French or Spanish already. How long it takes to learn your first one depends a lot on you - your time commitment, how efficient you are with language learning, and even just your attitude. Pronouncing the letter r in either French or Spanish is something that many learners struggle with years after they’ve mastered every other bit of the language.įinally, a word on how much time it’ll take to learn either French or Spanish. Generally, anyone learning Spanish or French has to spend a long time doing verb drills, learning all the ways you conjugate the some 500+ verbs you need in daily use, including all the frighteningly common exceptions.Īnd that’s before we even talk about the pronunciation of French and Spanish. There are definitely easier languages out there (though I’ll always argue there are no “easy” languages unless you’re just moving to an adjacent dialect). For people who only speak English, concepts like conjugation of verbs, the grammatical gender of nouns and adjectives, and alien ideas like the subjunctive* bedevil many a language student. There’s a lot about either French or Spanish grammar that will trip up a first-time language learner. (not twenty years ago with audio cassettes, like I did) Here are the resources I suggest to learn French if you’re doing it today. There are no easy languages! (Well, maybe “pig latin”…)
Which is easier, French or Spanish?Įven though French and Spanish are among the easiest languages to learn for an English speaker as a first foreign language, they’re definitely not easy languages to learn. I’ll answer this question in brief first. I learned French and Spanish myself through self-study and got them to a point where I use them professionally as a consultant and manager in modern international companies, and generally in an everyday context.Ī Five-Minute Overview of “French vs Spanish”: Which Should You Learn? Plus, French is a lot slangier in daily use (this is subjective, but other people’s subjective opinions agree with mine).Ĭonsider this a high-level guide to French vs Spanish in plain language by a speaker and former student of both. Similarly, French uses a number of shortcuts in grammar, like prepositions for time and belonging ( y and en), or preferring the perfect tense to the past tense in general use, that Spanish doesn’t have.
If you see printed signs or newspapers, you might guess some words (“oh, la carte must be la carta!”), but be lost with others (“what is the toilette? I’m looking for the baño, is this it, or is it a trap?”).
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